The concept of retro gaming can be a fuzzy business at times, but here's something that comes with a laser focus; a 2D fighter that harks back to that small handful of games released on the Neo Geo Pocket, SNK's beautiful late-90s handheld. Cardboard Robot's Pocket Rumble has finally emerged from a prolonged development on another handsome handheld, Nintendo's Switch, and it's a most curious exercise.
On the surface, this is an eerily accurate facsimile of the likes of King of Fighters R-2 or Last Blade: Beyond the Destiny, from its limited pixel count and cut-back colour palette. It apes the chibi style of those games, and even takes the two-button control scheme necessitated by the Neo Geo Pocket's layout and goes about making a virtue of it, all in the name of accessibility. It's a cute idea, executed with no small flair and imagination, though more often than not it can come across as something of an awkward fit.
Part of it's that slight mismatch between concept and hardware. The games that inspired Pocket Rumble were built around the limitations of the Neo Geo Pocket - that chibi art-style was the perfect way to maintain that SNK character with a fraction of the processing power - while also playing to its strengths. Who can forget that exquisite microswitched digital d-pad on the Neo Geo Pocket - as close an approximation of a joystick there's ever been with on a controller of its ilk, and something that's sadly rarely been replicated since. Certainly not by the Switch, anyway, whose JoyCons always come up short when it comes to fighting games.
0 comments:
Post a Comment